beyond the call of duty

I’ve always been impressed with Amazon‘s top notch customer service, but after the recent correspondence I had with them, they deserve even more recognition for how well they treat their customers. I would even say that they operate in their own arena of service, far higher than that of nearly all other online companies.

We sent a package to another company reusing a box sent from Amazon. Somehow the destination address on the box was removed and all that was left was Amazon’s return address, so the box was delivered to them. I got an e-mail from Amazon’s shipping department saying they had received the package, looked up the order number on the return address label and saw that it had been shipped to me for an order several months prior and asked if I knew anything about it and if so, what I wanted done. I told them I did know about it, and asked if they would be able to send it to the original destination, expecting to pay for the shipping costs. Not only did they ship it that afternoon without charging me anything, they thanked me for helping them figure it out.

Being the recipient of such high-quality service makes me want to buy things from them just to show how much I appreciate it.

(This is especially true after dealing with other companies who act like they’re doing you a favor by letting you buy from them, but that will be discussed in another blog entry.)

Comments

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  1. WOW! That is awesome! I love shopping at Amazon and have always been impressed with them yet this does go above and behond! Go Amazon!

    Comment by Lynn on August 24, 2004 @ 10:16 am
  2. Wow! I’ll have to remember that. I never had a problem with Amazon but probably hadn’t given them due credit.

    Comment by danithew on August 24, 2004 @ 12:38 pm
  3. This message inspired me to look at my Amazon order history and add up some numbers.

    Since 1997, I’ve placed over a hundred orders with Amazon. On the rare occasions when I had a problem with an order, Amazon straightened things out quickly. They really are very good.

    Comment by Eric James Stone on August 24, 2004 @ 5:10 pm
  4. Excellent story, thanks for sharing.

    No wonder the American Customer Satisfaction Index gave Amazon a score of 88 this year (they also had a top score last year).

    (I would link to it, but the URL contains the word jewelry, and your comment mechanism disallows me to post it.)

    Comment by Konstantinos on August 25, 2004 @ 5:20 pm
  5. Konstantinos: Thanks for letting me know. I have removed the greedy filter for jewelry.

    I found another site that lists Amazon’s score of 88.

    Comment by dan on August 25, 2004 @ 5:25 pm
  6. Thanks for the immediate reaction.

    I was intending to link to this.

    Comment by Konstantinos on August 25, 2004 @ 5:39 pm
  7. Thanks for the quick response with the link.

    Comment by dan on August 25, 2004 @ 8:49 pm
  8. I hope it wasn’t Amazon that shipped Eric James Stone’s FBI luring Buffy book!

    Comment by Renee on August 25, 2004 @ 10:05 pm

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